Into the Border
by atokad11
Summary: A fanfiction project I have for Touhou, a project that intends to explore the world of Gensokyo in a different and reimagined light with the intention of going deeper than ever into this magnificent world, specially designed to be enjoyed for people who know about Touhou and the ones who know little to nothing about this series and hoping with it they'll get interested in it.
1. Prologue

**=-Prologue-=**

_Gensokyo…The land of fantasy…_

What is Gensokyo you ask?

Gensokyo is a land that exists beyond the borders of everything around you, beyond the borders of what your mind can superficially tell you, beyond the border of reality itself…  
Far away into a place that can only be reached on your dreams and your fantasies.  
But is it a fantasy envisioned by a very creative individual or a dream land that feeds on the illusions human beings produce during their hours of sleep? Who knows…  
You can see it both ways, Gensokyo is a land that exist in a place that cannot be reached or envisioned by logical minds, minds that have forgotten about the joys of life and have accepted a life of mundane chores being repeated over and over without seeking to break the routine, cursed to repeat the same actions day after day for the rest of their lives.  
People who have forgotten the magic of the world that surrounds them…isn't that the saddest fate you can imagine?

But you want to know about Gensokyo don't you? You want me to tell you about this fantastic world that lies beyond the borders of reality and logic; you want to know what makes this place so special and what all the mysteries it hides are about.  
I can see in your eyes you are special one, you are different from everyone else, you still believe in magic, you still believe that there is more to this world than what your eyes can tell you.  
It is people like you who I like, and it is people like you who I always share the tales from the land of Gensokyo.  
Sit next to me then, let me tell you everything I know about the mystic land of Gensokyo, I hope you have some time because there are many stories for you to listen…

…Gensokyo…The Land of Fantasy.  
Prepare for a journey into this fantasy land my friend.


	2. Chapter 1: The Shrine Maiden of Paradise

The sound of the birds singing to the new day that rises over the horizon rapidly across the area announcing to everyone who can hear their songs that a new day has started and new adventures to be had.  
This would be the case for the majority of people indeed.  
But there was someone who heard the songs of the morning birds and thought they were the same loud annoying noises again that interrupted her dreams.

Inside the forest that slowly let the rays of the sun to slip through its branches giving light and heat to start the new day, there was a set of stairs made of stone, old moldy stone after an intense spring season that came with a lot of rainy days, something unusual in this place.  
The set of stone stairs goes up into the hill for about five minutes of walk finally making its way to the top where a path made of stones continued crossing below an arc like structure, a tall _**Torii***_ received everyone who walked across the stone path until the end.  
At the end of the stone path, there is a small building, a _**Shinto Shrine***_ to be precise, it was very small and it was made of wood in its majority, it was an old place, a testament to the land of Gensokyo, as old as the land itself, guarded by its Shrine Maidens for generations, the most important place in the land of Gensokyo was this old building.  
This place is called…The Hakurei Shrine…

…And inside the shrine, the Shrine Maiden of this generation was sleeping…a sleep that was interrupted by the morning birds.

_"Mmm…"_

The girl slowly groaned as she was taken out of the world of dreams by the sound of the new day.

_"No…not yet please…"  
"Give me a few extra minutes…"_

The girl said while she tried to silence the loud sounds of the morning by covering her head with the sheets.  
But she knew it was useless in the end…the new day had already demanded her to participate, and as much as the girl would love to just go back into the world of her dreams, she knows she has duties to perform as the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine.

She slowly sat down as she opened her eyes to see the interior of the shrine as it was illuminated by the first rays of morning light leaking through the window and the soft translucent material in the sliding door leading outside.  
The shrine did not have many rooms in her shrine as it was very small, she was in one of the only three rooms of the building the other two being the bathroom and the kitchen.  
You could say she was in her bedroom, which was also the living room and the dining room; there wasn't enough room to fit everything so she had to improvise a nice way to arrange everything in her home.

_"Another Day has started…how exciting…"_

_._

_._

After a refreshing bath, the girl proceeded to dress up with a set of clean clothes for the day  
Her regular attire consists on a sleeveless red dress with white borders, a pair of detached sleeves in her arms with red ribbons to keep them from falling, white socks and to finish it up, a red ribbon on top of her head.

After she finished dressing up, she walked toward the mirror in her wall to check if she was ready for the new day.  
In front of the mirror was a girl with long dark brown hair up to slightly below her shoulders and brown eyes, bearing a normal expression on her face as she gazed upon her own reflection.  
She slightly smiled as she declared that she was indeed ready for the new day.

She abandoned the bathroom to move into the main room of the building where she quickly checked on the desk where there was a pile of books and letters to see if there were notes on an old notebook with the words "Monthly Schedule" about incoming festivities to celebrate.  
There was nothing written for the following weeks, which put a smile on the girls face.  
This meant she wasn't going to be doing much in the following days and could take the time to rest and just enjoy the days pass by without problem; she loved when days were like this.

After she was done checking the notebook, she walked toward the main door and proceeded to open it, letting the rays of the new day fill the house with light.

_"The sun doesn't take too much to brighten up these days…it's so annoying"_

The girl said while she was covering her face from the sunlight that hit her right on the face.  
After accommodating to the light, she moved took a pair of Mary Janes, her preferred footwear and one she has been using since she was a little girl, next to her door and put them on to walk out into the world; she remembers how she founds them one day on the shrine apparently having materialized out of nowhere and she has been wearing them ever since, she finds them to be really comfortable; as she was finished putting on her shoes, she wondered why the sun would be so bright when it was barely 7:00 AM in the morning according to the clock behind her on a wall.  
She then walked out toward a box in front of the Shrine's gates, a large wooden box with a text in one of the sides facing the road leading to the shrine where everyone could see it that said "Donations"

The girl lifted the cover to see the content of the box, she looked inside hoping to find some money that visitors to the shrine might have donated; but unfortunately for her, there was nothing inside, only spider webs and dust balls.

_"Of course it's empty…why would I expect different?"_

The girls said while she closed the box remembering the fact that no one ever donates to the shrine, because no one visits her shrine anyway.  
Maybe it was because it was deep in the forest, maybe it was because people didn't want to walk the long path of stairs to get to the shrine, or maybe people just didn't care about her enough to visit the shrine.  
The girl did not know the exact reason why no one came to the shrine, but she honestly didn't care too much about it, she enjoyed the peace this gave her, which she really liked.  
She was a calm and simple girl, who wanted nothing more out of life than just enjoy it in peace.

She then went to the side of the building where a broom was located and she took it to perform the first task of the day, sweep the path to the shrine.  
There wasn't much to do this day much to her relief, since the spring was ending; there was almost no trash to remove from the path other than dust, unlike in other stations like fall where there would be tons of leaves to sweep and then organize to burn them, a task that sounded harder as the wind always gave her a thought time messing what she had already gathered and spreading it around randomly.  
Just thinking about it made her groan with displeasure as she really hated that season; there was so much work to do.  
The only thing she loved about fall was roasting sweet potatoes using those leaves with her best friend; there was a charm to that tradition from her ancestors; ancestors that she didn't really knew much about.

The shrine maidens of the Hakurei shrine have existed as much as the land of Gensokyo has, but the girl had never really bothered to look up on information about her ancestors on the Human Village, she was so focused on living her life in the present that she didn't have time to study the past.  
It is not a surprise she thought, she didn't have a family she can remember…  
Ever since she was a little girl she has lived alone in the shrine taking care of herself and learning all the ancient arts about being a shrine maiden from the documents inside the shrine, documents with invaluable content about divine and spiritual arts as well as history from the founding of Gensokyo that she had only explored at a 35%.  
She had learned all the basic things she had to do as the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine and nothing more, she didn't even bother to practice all she had learned.

You could say the girl was lazy, and she was…  
But thankfully for her, she was dotted with a natural talent for being a shrine maiden as were all the shrine maidens before her, which allowed her to do her job very well despite only mastering 35% of her full potential as a shrine maiden.

And what was the job of a Shrine Maiden?

Hunting _***Yokais**_ of course…

Or at least savage ones that caused trouble and needed to be put in place to keep the balance and order in Gensokyo; that was the job of the shrine maiden.

All of this made the girl stop sweeping the road and think about it for a moment…

She thought about the yokai, this race of beings that exist in Gensokyo, they are all different things that with the pass of time have been transformed into yokais, yokais can evolve from anything as long as the right time passes and special circumstances are met, the most common ones evolve from animals or even other humans and others evolve from inanimate objects and take on a human like appearance.  
It is unknown to her how and why these objects turn into yokais thought, all she knew is that it was her job to hunt them down if they made trouble.

After thinking on this, the girl continued her task of sweeping the road and noticed that around half an hour had passed since she started.

_"She'll come any moment…I know she will…"_

Said the girl raising her look into the sky, as if she was waiting for something to show up…or rather, someone she knew.  
With so very little visitors to the shrine, the girl didn't make human contact very often unless she had to go to the human village and get supplies, because of this she didn't have many friends to talk to or get visited by.  
As a matter of fact, she only had one friend…just one friend.

A girl she knows ever since she was a little girl, a girl she could consider a friend, a girl who came to visit her almost daily and spend a lot of time with her, a friend whom with she had shared many adventures and many memories gathered through the years of knowing each other.

The inner monologue of the girl gets interrupted by the sound of bird being altered and flying away from the trees; almost as if they had detected something, something that was approaching making enough impact on the ambience to disturb them.

_"There she is…"_

Said the girl staring into the sky, right on the spot she knew her friend, this friend that always visited her would appear.

But after some time staring into the sky, nothing happened…

This surprised the girl as she was certain her friend was coming, and she always came flying through the sky in a broom moving on top of the forest often scaring the birds in the trees away if she was flying fast enough.  
But this time there was nothing, she heard the birds being disturbed by the coming of her friend, but there was no sign of her friend in the skies.

Right when she was wondering what could have happened; something forces her out of her mind…  
A voice that came from the threes…

_"YO!"_

A voice she recognized, for it was without a doubt, the voice of her friend, getting closer from the trees into the path that lead to the shrine.  
A voice that began calling out for her…

…A voice that became clearer as it was getting closer to the stone path.  
A voice that was saying…

_"YO! REIMU, OVER HERE"_

A voice calling out her name…

**…Reimu Hakurei, the Shrine Maiden of the Hakurei Shrine**.

* * *

**==The More you Know/In Case you didn't Know==**

_***Torii**: Traditional Japanese arc like structure often found in Shinto Shrines, they symbolize the entrance from the profane to the sacred, they are used as the main symbol for the Shinto religion and when putting Shinto Shrines in the maps, people put a Torii as an icon to identify them._

***Shinto Shrine**: _Temples devoted to the Shinto spirituality practiced by the native people of Japan and has endured to this day, each shrine houses (Enshrines) the "Kami" which are spirits or phenomena worshiped in Shinto, each shrine belongs to an specific clan or clans, in Touhou's case, the Shrine belongs to the Hakurei Clan from which Reimu is a member of._

***Yokai/Yōkai**: _Terminology used by Japanese to describe supernatural beings that range from mythical creatures unique to the Japanese culture to even ghosts. In Touhou, Yokai are the beings that inhabit Gensokyo in its majority and they are created from animals, objects who after time and under special circumstances, become yokais with varying degrees or power._  
_Usually they don't get along with humans as many of them enjoy causing all kinds of misfortune to humanity from simple trickery to even eating them._  
_It is the job of the Hakurei Shrine Maiden to put order and hunt down these yokai that cause trouble._


	3. Chapter 2: The Human Yokai Cycle

The shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, Reimu Hakurei was surprised to see a shadowy figure come out of the woods, a figure that without a doubt had the voice of her best friend.

"_Reimu! Over here"_

She raised her voice in an attempt to get the attention of the shrine maiden, who now knowing where the shadowy figure was coming from, waved her hand in that direction to let her know she was already aware of her presence.

It was in this moment that the figure finally stepped out of the shadow the trees of the forest surrounding the Shrine and the stone path leading to it and was illuminated by the morning sunrays.

A girl with blonde lose up hair up to her waist and seemed to be around the same height and age as the shrine maiden stepped out of the forest into the stone path stopping to stare at her friend.

She was wearing a black and white dress with a white apron tied up with a big sized ribbon around her waist; she had a pair of black boots with shoe laces and was carrying a big witch hat with a white ribbon in her right hand that was wide enough to cover her almost completely and on the left hand she was carrying an old broom, the same broom she always used to fly.

She seemed to be a little bruised up and dirty, but had a bright smile in her face that was only highlighted by the sunrays illuminating her, she was happy to come visit her best friend one more time.

"_Yo Reimu, what is it?"_

Said the blonde girl to the shrine maiden while she had that bright smile in her face, almost as she was trying to ignore the situation she was in and trying to pretend everything was ok.

"_What is it with __**YOU **__**Marisa**__?"_

Asked Reimu to her friend, the blonde girl known as **Marisa Kirisame**, the one girl who would always come to accompany Reimu, a practice that had almost become an obligatory routine for her.

Marisa laughed as a reply to the questioning of her friend, something that she did for a few seconds before properly replying.

"_You see, I was flying over the woods like I usually do and then…without warning…"_

Marisa raised the hand holding her broom and pointed it toward Reimu who was listening to her friend not surprised by this action at all as it was custom of Marisa to be this theatrical when talking.

"…_my broom stopped working and I was unable to fly for a moment, but it was enough to make my ass fall from the sky landing on the trees"_

Finished Marisa as she let go of her broom falling on the floor, the sound making a soft but still noticeable sound in the area filled with woods and birds singing.

Reimu looked down at the broom in the floor not being surprised in the slightest by Marisa's action; however the story she told Reimu did surprised her a little.

"_How did that happen? Did you lose your focus or something?"_

Marisa quickly replied to Reimu with a gesture of surprise.

"_Me? I am a good magician who has mastered the craft of every single thing I do after years of hard studies Reimu, I AM NOT going to simply lose my focus while on air"_

Of course the question touched a sensitive spot on Marisa, Reimu knew she would get that reply and chuckled a little bit after her friend finished speaking.

Marisa was a practitioner of magic ever since she has known her, she has always had affection for the art of magic and this lead her to study and master the mystical arts to the point of obsession,; she is as good at using magic as Witch Yokais despite being a human herself.

So of course the possibility of Marisa "Failing" at her job was not an option.

"_Then why do you think happened?"_

Asked Reimu while kneeling down to pick up Marisa's broom and handling back to her, Marisa replied after taking her broom back.

"_I don't know, it just happened"_

"_How…simple"_

Replied Reimu as she raised her look into the sky on the spot where Marisa should have appeared flying.

"_Well it's not that it really matters anyway…I am here, aren't you happy about that?"_

Said Marisa as she extended her arms as if she was expecting a hug from her friend, a friend who just looked at her for a moment and reached for Marisa's shoulder putting her hand on it as she gave her friend a smile and replied.

"_Of course, now come on, let's talk, I'll make some tea"_

_._

_._

"_MARISA! THE SHOES"_

Screamed Reimu as Marisa was stepping into her house with her shoes on, which of course reminded Marisa that it was the custom of her friend's heritage that people should always take off their shoes when entering in a house, a tradition she didn't really understand and always found pointless to do, but she respected her friend's rules.

"_Of course, sorry about that"_

Said Marisa while untying her boots and putting them next to Reimu's shoes on a side of the sliding door of the shrine.

"_You come here almost every day, how can you forget about that?"_

Asked Reimu while she came out of the kitchen with cups used for drinking tea and the teapot that had the tea they would drink.

"_I am a very busy girl you know? I have a lot of things in my mind, so I tend to forget these things"_

Said Marisa as she was entering the house now in a proper condition to come inside and take the tea with her friend.

She took place on the floor next to the table where Reimu had just finished putting the cups and proceeded to pour the tea into each of the cups before sitting on the other side of the table ready to talk with Marisa as they drank their tea.

Marisa thanked her friend for the tea and proceeded to take sip as she began remembering things she wanted to discuss with Reimu who wasted no time in asking.

"_So how have you been? Everything has been good in your end?"_

Marisa put the tea cup in the table and proceeded to tell Reimu about her activities in the last days

"_Well not much really, I've been on the __**Forest of Magic**__ most of the time going out to look for a special type of mushrooms I need for a recent experiment I am working on with __**Alice**__, but we haven't found many of these, it's so frustrating"_

Said Marisa while letting her left hand fall on the table from a short distance as she proceeded to explain Reimu the details of the experiment she was working on with Alice, another witch who was her neighbor in the Forest of Magic where Marisa's home was located, Reimu always found the nature of Marisa experiments to be sometimes too complicated for her to understand, but she knew that most of her experiments looked to archive two goals, making things explode harder and releasing even bigger magical blasts, that was Marisa's way of using magic, very destructive and very flashy.

"_Well maybe you can try using another type of mushrooms that are easier to find"_

Suggested Reimu as she used took another sip of her tea, to which Marisa replied

"_I suppose I could, but it's not going to give me the same results I am hoping to archive"_

"_What results? Making the explosion harder?"_

Asked Reimu chuckling a little to which Marisa replied with a sarcastic laugh.

"_Well next time we go after those wild and troublesome Yokais, don't complain if I can't assist you properly"_

Marisa said while turning to the side in the direction of the door as she took another sip from her tea.

She looked into the open door for a few seconds of silence, the door that showed the stone path leading down the stairs as she changed the expression of her face to a more serious one, something that Reimu noticed and before she was about to ask what was wrong, Marisa wasted no time in taking the words out of Reimu's mouth.

"_Oh! And I remembered something I saw in the Human Village one of these days…"_

"_Oh?"_

That surprised Reimu, what would Marisa have to say about the Human Village? Why was she so serious about it?

"_The Human Village, what about it?"_

Marisa turned to see Reimu and it was clear she had a more serious face than what she had previously seen and proceeded to tell Reimu about the thing she saw.

"_I decided to go to the Human Village for some supplies with Alice and there weren't many people in the streets, not even in the stores, it was completely empty"_

That was an unusual thing to happen Reimu thought, the human village was often very agitated and they had a lot of activity so it is unlikely to see the place so lonely unless it's really late at night and even then, there are still a few people on the streets either talking or watching the stars.

Marisa proceeded with her tale.

"_We were of course surprised by this, and we explored the place looking for someone, but there wasn't anyone around…"_

Marisa stopped her narration in a dramatic pause to drink some of her tea and then carried on with the story

"…_until we heard faint noises from a building"_

"_What? You heard something in a building?"_

Asked Reimu

"_Yes, it seemed like there were a large group of people reunited in one building and seemed to be either screaming or praising something, I couldn't identify which building it was coming from, all the buildings had the windows closed so it was hard to tell"_

All of this was disturbingly curious, why would people gather in a building? What could they have possibly been talking about that they clearly wanted to keep in secret?

"_What else happened?"_

Reimu asked wanting to know more about this mysterious event

"_I don't know, Alice began insisting on us to leave because she wasn't feeling comfortable in the village for some reason, she got so insistent about it that I ended up agreeing and we left the place and we haven't speak about it until now I am talking to you"_

Clearly there was something going on Reimu thought, the humans in the human village were mostly people who just lived their everyday lives in a land full of yokais in peace without getting into much trouble with them, they only cared about their daily lives and that was it.

Why would they suddenly be doing all these secret meetings that possibly involved the entire village as there was no one to be found on the streets.

But then Reimu noticed that detail Marisa had mentioned…her friend Alice being uncomfortable in the village.

It was logical she would be uncomfortable; after all…she was a witch…a **Witch Yokai**.

"_Why did Alice get uncomfortable Marisa?"_

Asked Reimu knowing she would probably find the key in that element.

Marisa quickly caught what Reimu was trying to look for and replied with the information she needed.

"_She mentioned she felt something in the air, something that in her own words "Was directed to her" and it made her feel uncomfortable, exact word she used for it was…scared"_

Reimu picked her cup of tea and drank all the remaining content inside as she thought about it, whatever the people in the human village where doing, it HAD to do with yokais, and it had to be a feeling shared by a large number of people, large enough to make a change in the mood and get any Yokai in the village uncomfortable.

Marisa who apparently had reached the same conclusion as Reimu finished the content of her cup as well and putting the cup back in the table, asked Reimu the obvious question.

"_Want to go and investigate?"_

It appears her plans for having a peaceful and calm time was interrupted, fate had other plans for the shrine maiden and as much as Reimu would just like to keep drinking tea with her friend and talk about nicer and more interesting things than her job.

She had an obligation and she had to do it.

"_Sure, why not? Let's go" _

_._

_._

The morning sun was now at full potential, it was almost midday and it shined upon the Hakurei Shrine as the two girls walked the stone path heading toward the stone stairs leading down into a path in the middle of the woods into a distant field full of pasture.

This was the land of Gensokyo, and their destination was the Human Village.

Marisa prepared her broom ready to take a flight on it when she was stopped at Reimu who had other idea in mind.

"_Maybe we should walk; I think it would be best"_

This surprised Marisa as the last person you would expect to hear this from was Reimu, someone who actually had the natural ability to fly unlike her who had to use magic to flight.

"_Huh? Are you feeling well?"_

Marisa asked to her friend who giggled for her friend's concern.

"_Well we are going to investigate after all; maybe we shouldn't draw too much attention by landing from the sky"_

True words thought Marisa, so she held back her broom in her hand and accepted she would have to walk from the shrine to the human village, a journey that would take them around twenty minutes of walking without stop.

"_Let's go then"_

Both girls began their walk through the stone stairs into the path that would lead them to the human village.

As they reached the beginning of the stairs into a path in the middle of some trees that indicated the limits of the forest into the fields of the main Gensokyo land, a path that due to the little visit ratio Reimu had that actually bothered to cross this path, was in an abandoned condition with nothing but a poorly delineated clean tract of dirt leading to where the forest met the fields.

As both girls began walking this path, Marisa broke the silence and began a conversation with her friend.

"_Say Reimu…"_

Marisa asked as they walked and Reimu replied quickly

"_What?"_

"_Do you think it will finally happen?"_

Reimu was surprised by this question at first, but before she could ask for a more details, she put it in perspective with the situation they were about to face and understood what Marisa meant.

Of course, she was asking if a confrontation between yokais and humans would finally happen.

"_I don't know…something like this has never happened"_

Reimu told her friend as she lightly scratched her chin trying to remember if there was an event where yokai and human were close to get into a full blown confrontation.

"_I am sure something like this has never happened before, and I hope it never happens"_

After Reimu finished saying this there was a brief silence between the two friends as they were getting close to the exit of the forest, Marisa was quick to break the silence.

"_That would mean you would have to fight lots of yokais and kill them wouldn't it?"_

Those words made Reimu feel uncomfortable as they put her in an scenario she had contemplated a few times…and one she was of course not very fond of, but one she couldn't help to think as it was her responsibility as a shrine maiden to keep things in order; and one of those tasks to keep order included hunting yokai that caused trouble to humans.

Reimu looked down to the floor with an expression of seriousness in her face that Marisa noticed and knew she had asked a sensitive question to her friend.

Marisa knew what Reimu had to do as a shrine maiden and she had even helped her a few times in some adventures both of them had had in the past where they had to fight very powerful yokai that threatened to alter the order and peace of Gensokyo, from various innocent pranks to massive complex actions that involved things like covering all of Gensokyo in a Red Mist to block the Sun or even crazier things like Stealing the essence of Spring preventing it to come prolonging the stay of the winter and many other dangerous and crazy but very intense adventures both of them shared in their fight against troublesome yokai.

Despite all of this Marisa knew a truth about Reimu, a truth that if people were to find out, they would distrust her and wouldn't rely on her for protection and would abandon all faith and hope in her as a defender of the order and balance against yokai, but the truth is that Reimu wasn't fond of yokai hunting in the slightest…it was actually a lot more complex than that.

"_It sucks that humans and yokais have to fight all the time"_

Marisa said in attempt to remind her friend that she understood her feelings; it seemed to work as Reimu at least raised her look and replied.

"_I know…I've never really understand why yokai have to cause mischief and trouble for humans and why humans have to hunt them for it"_

Reimu said as she remembered the nature of things in Gensokyo.

Yokai and Humans, the two species living in Gensokyo didn't get along, they were in a constant conflict with each other as part of what she understood as a cycle that had to be kept, or at least that's what her ancestors left in the scripts she read on her train as a shrine maiden.

People in the Human Village disliked yokai and lived in constant fear of them, even the civilized ones as they had incredible powers, the more civilized a yokai becomes, the stronger it gets so a yokai that is able to talk to humans in a natural fashion and is capable of picking a human like behavior and customs was a very dangerous threat to humans.

But usually civilized yokai behaved well and had left their desire to cause trouble away with their wild instincts in the past so they weren't interested in looking for trouble and just wanted to live their lives in peace, however if confronted by humans they wouldn't hesitate in fighting back, and these yokai had enough power to kill them all very easily.

Some of them even had the power to wipe out the Human Village out of the map if they wanted to, so it was easy to understand why humans would be afraid of them and wanted to see them get exterminated, a task they entrusted Reimu to do and one she didn't enjoy.

There was a time where she believed that all yokai were evil beings and had to be hunted down, just as the scripts of her ancestors indicated, however all of that changed when she met a particular yokai that came to visit her one day when she was young…

…After meeting this yokai who was very polite and only wanted help from Reimu to heal her injuries and insisted she hadn't come to look for trouble, after Reimu healed her wounds the yokai properly thank her and kept her promise leaving as fast as she had came.

That meeting changed Reimu's perception of yokai and after it she encountered more of these civilized yokai who most of them were just as calm and non aggressive as the one that came to the shrine that day, all of those encounters made Reimu seriously doubt about the "Evil" nature of yokai.

Where they really the evil monsters her ancestor's scripts said?

Where they really irredeemable beasts that had to be destroyed or else they would bring chaos and destruction to the land of Gensokyo?

Reimu didn't believe this, she believed that maybe just like the humans, they just wanted to live their lives in peace and nothing more, if that was the case, then there was no need to exterminate them for that, some of them were so much like humans that aside from certain traits in their appearances such as wings or tails, you could probably consider them humans as well, there was no difference between them aside from the physical attributes and magical powers, they were just a race of people who wanted the same things humans wanted.

Reimu honestly didn't see a difference between them and seriously believed they shouldn't be treated differently or with racisms, they should be treated equally because in her eyes, they were equal beings who strived for the same goals in life.

And that was her biggest secret, if the other humans would ever find out about it, things would be difficult for her, she was the shrine maiden in charge of keeping order after all, she couldn't have sympathy for yokais or that would go against her job and people would even consider her a traitor to human kind for merely sympathizing with some yokai.

It definitely wasn't easy being a shrine maiden and she hoped things were different.

As both girls reached the beginning of the path and entered in the main fields of the land of Gensokyo.

Green fields with pasture all over the areas the eyes could see and other sections of forests in the distance, one of them being the legendary **Bamboo Forest** famous for being a place where people would often get lost and being the home to a lot of rabbit yokai.

On the north they could spot a large mountain standing in the distance, considered to be the tallest place in the land of Gensokyo, the **Yokai Mountain**, home of the _**Kappa***_ and the _**Tengu***_ who lived in there.

But their destination was a much closer place where a faint cloud of white smoke made its way into the infinite blue sky of the land of Gensokyo, The Human Village.

Reimu took some time to breathe the air of the fields and then turned to Marisa smiling, a gesture that greatly eased all the worries she had about her friend.

"_So, let's go investigate what's going on"_

Reimu told Marisa while she pointed at the human village in the distance.

"_Yeah, let's see what all that mystery and fuss is all about"_

Replied Marisa as both girls made their way toward the Human Village a journey through the green fields of Gensokyo, the land of humans and yokais, two species that were in conflict with each other and it was the job of the Hakurei shrine maiden Reimu to prevent things from going into a potential war.

A task that Reimu would do her best to prevent, and the first step of that was finding out what was going on in the Human village.

* * *

**==The More you Know/In Case you didn't Know==**

_***Kappa**: A type of Yokai that is very popular in Japanese mythology, they have the appearance of a reptilian like creature resembling a turtle with a shell on their back and the size of a child, they are known for lurking in lakes and performing various acts on humans and other animals that go from innocent pranks to more malevolent acts like drowning people.  
In Gensokyo Kappas are depicted as beings who live in the lakes near the Yokai mountain, all of them have humanoid appearance and are usually dress with blue clothes that resemble the ones used by mechanics, usually carrying a backpack loaded with various tools, they think they are on friendly terms with humans and are willing to help them once in a while but humans aren't very fond of them as with any other yokai._

***Tengu**: A type of yokai that is very popular in Japanese mythology, there are two subspecies of tengu, the Karasu Tengu which are anthropomorphized crows and the Yamabushi Tengu which resemble humans with red skin and long noses (Although there is a Chinese variant that resembles anthropomorphic canines), like any other yokai, they play pranks on humans and are very malicious beings in general.  
In Gensokyo the Tengu mostly find in Gensokyo are Karasu Tengu and they live in the hills of the Yokai Mountain, they resemble humans with crow wings on their backs, they are mostly focused on gossiping and spreading news around, they are also fond of drinking.


End file.
